


32 Down (No Ships Like Partnerships)

by Wagnetic



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 21:28:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wagnetic/pseuds/Wagnetic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus joined the police force primarily so that he could investigate cases like his father’s disappearance. His father was the first officer aboard the MS Hispana, a cargo ship that sank under mysterious circumstances and whose crew was never found. Now Marcus and his unpredictable new partner, Esca MacCunoval, have a new case ahead of them and sailors are reporting sightings of the Hispana and her crew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	32 Down (No Ships Like Partnerships)

**Author's Note:**

> For the Eagle Fanmedia Challenge, inspired by the picture of the old boat. But mostly just because I wanted to see what I'd come up with if I blended The Eagle with the "Mountie on the Bounty" episodes of due South.
> 
> Unfortunately, this is an abandoned fic. I had hoped to finish it, but sometimes that's not how these things go.

Marcus’s dad was a sailor, which meant that he had an extraordinary life. That’s what Marcus’s mama told him. She said that “extraordinary” was the perfect word for it because it had two meanings: both “amazing” and “not normal.” Where most of the boys at Marcus’s school had fathers who came home from work at the same time every day, Marcus’s dad was gone all the time, and when he did come home he never seemed to stay for long. Still, when he was around he brought Marcus keepsakes from all over the world, which were good, and songs and stories, which were better. Besides, Marcus’s dad was special because he was the first officer of the MS Hispana: a huge cargo ship with living space for more than thirty men, the most beautiful ship of its kind. And whereas the other boys’ fathers would be greeted with a “hello” and maybe dinner on the table, it was always a big deal when Marcus’s dad came home. Marcus’s mama would make a special dinner and Marcus would set the table and even the dog would twirl and yap by his feet like it knew something important was happening.

But one evening when Marcus was nine years old, his dad just didn’t come home. Marcus sat with his mama and waited and waited until she finally sent him to bed, but Marcus couldn’t sleep. And then the phone rang, and Marcus heard his mama crying, and he couldn’t stay in bed any longer. He wrapped his favorite blanket around his shoulders and tiptoed down the stairs and into the living room where his mama sat shaking on the couch with her head in her hands. When he asked her what was wrong, she said, very softly and with a catch in her throat, that his dad wouldn’t be coming home. “He got another job?” Marcus asked. But no, that wasn’t it at all, because the Hispana was down, sunk somehow, reasons yet to be determined, and Marcus’s dad wasn’t coming home at all. There would be no more stories, no more songs: not tonight, not ever.

Marcus cried all the time, even at school, until the other boys laughed, and then he got angry. He picked fights and came home with black eyes and split lips. His teachers called his mama to come to the school and pick him up, and they told her all about the way he was “acting out.” It wasn’t fair that they expected him to pretend like everything the same as before because everything was different and wrong now and he hated it, hated them, hated everything, but then he saw how his mama’s eyes were redder when he came home all bruised, and he understood. His dad had always told Marcus that he had to take care of his mama while he was away. Now Marcus understood that it wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right, but it wasn’t any better for his mama and he had to be strong for her because she needed looking after now more than ever.

And nine-year-old Marcus, now the man of the family, decided then that he would find out exactly what had happened to his father no matter how long it took.

 

\----------

 

At first glance, Esca MacCunoval appears to be the exact opposite of Marcus: short while Marcus is tall, lean while Marcus is heavily muscled, fair while Marcus is dark. Their conduct is equally mismatched: Marcus, polite and a little too formal, and Esca, completely casual and often rude. Marcus follows protocol and Esca does as he pleases. Marcus acts on reason and precedent and Esca acts on instinct. Marcus tries to find common ground with their suspects and Esca threatens to kick them in the head. Still, Marcus knows (hopes?) that there’s more to Esca hidden under the smirks and the spiked hair and the combat boots. All men have vulnerabilities and Esca is just a man, but the problem is that Esca’s a hard man to get to know. Marcus has been trying his best, and normally he’s good at getting people to like him or at least tolerate him, but nothing seems to work with Esca. He doesn’t respond to small talk, nor to heartfelt confidences. He certainly won’t initiate either. Esca just wants to solve his cases as quickly as possible, and he’s not interested in making friends. And that part’s fine, really, because Marcus doesn’t _need_ his new partner’s friendship or approval or anything, but they’ve got to be able to work together. Esca always rushes into dangerous situations and never tells Marcus a thing beforehand, and it’s really starting to be a problem.

“Would you warn me next time you’re planning on jumping out the window and landing on the perp?” Marcus hisses once their backup finally arrives to haul the man back to the station.

“It’s not like I was _planning_ it,” Esca says, and he actually rolls his eyes like a sullen teenager.

“So, what, is that just something that happens to you from time to time?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Esca snaps. “Every now and then I get this urge to be good at my job and actually catch the criminals instead of hoping they’ll wait for me to get down the stairs.”

Marcus leans back against the grubby wall of the apartment block and finds himself crossing his arms protectively over his chest. It’s not like he’s bad at his job, he just doesn’t feel the need to make sudden, reckless decisions without letting his partner know. “How are you going to catch the perp when you break your legs, then?”

“I’m not going to break my legs,” Esca says in his best ‘I’m talking to a total moron’ voice. “I’ve got a perfect record. Never broken them yet.”

“Yet,” Marcus repeats.

“Why do you always have to do that?”

“Do what?”

“That!” Esca says. He takes a step closer to Marcus, and the step is a threat. That much is written plainly on Esca’s face. He’s not meeting Marcus halfway, he’s closing in on him, and the noise of his boots is far louder than it really should be. “That thing where it all goes fine, and I get my collar, and then you have some fucked up need to scold me about whatever little thing I didn’t do exactly the way you would have done it! And then you get all huffy when I don’t want to hear it.”

“That simply isn’t true and you know it. It went fine this time, but it doesn’t always, and I only raise objection when I feel that your actions could endanger—”

“Bullshit.”

“We need to be capable of functioning as a team.”

“I’m perfectly capable on my own,” Esca says, and Marcus can hear the next words even before they come out of his mouth. “You’re the problem. You’re the weak link here. All you do in this partnership is drag me down. You’re useless.”

He doesn’t mean to do it, he really doesn’t, but by the time he figures out what he’s doing, his hands are already bunched in Esca’s shirt. He’s turning and slamming Esca’s back into the wall, leaning in so that Esca’s face is level with his own and just scant inches away. For just the slightest fragmented moment, Esca’s face registers ‘surprised’ and almost ‘fearful,’ but then that expression’s gone and now Marcus is reading ‘enraged.’ Neither expression matters though, because Marcus is still running on automatic and the words are coming out of his mouth without any real direction from his brain.

“Don’t say that,” he’s hissing. “Don’t you ever say that to me.”  He wants to say more, that this job is the world to him, that it’s all he has, that he does it in his father’s memory so that just maybe he can keep some other little boy’s dad from going out one day and never coming home. He doesn’t say any of it though, because his brain has finally caught it with his body and he lets Esca go immediately. This lapse in self-discipline is inexcusable and he’s ashamed to have acted out like that, entirely on impulse. Esca just brushes his hands over the slightly wrinkled fabric of his shirt, fixes Marcus with an unreadable stare, and walks away.


End file.
